From the Tippity Top to the Tippity Bottom
[Left: the tippity top of Manhattan, where it meets the Bronx. Right: the tippity bottom, with views of Lady Liberty.]
Fourteen years ago, shortly after I moved to New York City for the first time, my grad school classmate Mark introduced me to an old friend of his, Amy.
Amy lived just a few blocks from me in the East Village – I was on 1st between 1st and 2nd, she was on 7th between 1st and A – and we quickly became fast friends. She was the veteran city dweller, with several years in Manhattan under her belt, and she approached life in New York with a cheerful completionist energy. As in, she literally had a list of things she wanted to do in the city, and was working her way through them.
Together, we checked so many items off that list – fashion week, Anchor Bar, Soulcycle, Mudspot, Death & Co, Balthazar, even the Tompkins Square Park halloween dog parade. And, somewhere between the comedy club visits and celebrity chef-helmed restaurant reservations, I picked up her predilection for list-making. I’ve had my own New York to-do list ever since.
Today, I checked one giant item off it: walk from the top of Manhattan to the bottom. Or, as Broad City so charmingly put it, walk “from the tippity top to the tippity bottom.” Specifically, from the 225th Street 1 Station in the Bronx to the southernmost tip of Battery Park.
Here’s how it went:
7:30am: Set off from the Marble Hill subway stop which, ironically, I reached via Uber. I’m not about to do any ‘off route’ walking today – I have to save my strength!
8am: In Inwood, it’s surprisingly hilly and forested – the vibe is more ‘mom’s cottage in the woods’ than ‘concrete jungle.’ The sky already looks threatening. Today’s forecast called for heavy rain and the sort of wind that prompted my apartment building management to send a “please secure the objects on your balcony” email, but I could not be deterred. Not because I’m full of dogged determination but because this is a day that I had a) childcare and b) no plans. These conditions are not easily replicable.
8:30am: In Washington Heights, every fire hydrant seems to be spewing its own rain shower (foreshadowing). And in Sugar Hill, the metal gates of still-shuttered storefronts serve as canvasses for street art and wise maxims. I’ve never been to these neighborhoods before, so I relish this quick glimpse of life uptown.
9:30am: First stop, for an espresso tonic at Plowshares Coffee in Harlem.
10am: I cut through Columbia, and the campus seems to straddle two worlds – I enter from Harlem, and exit into the Upper West Side. Strollers and Alo Yoga sets abound.
10:30am: It starts to spit and I immediately regret wearing only a thin white t-shirt. I take cover at Zabar’s, buy a branded umbrella, and eat Hamantash until I (mistakenly) think the worst of the rain has passed.
11am: The wind turns my umbrella inside out and the handle falls off (?!?!?). I hold onto the sharp, raw metal nub of the umbrella for dear life until I can duck into the Columbus Circle mall to shake myself off. I buy umbrella #2 from a street vendor and keep walking.
11:30am: I’ve survived the lake-sized puddles that turned Times Square from merely unpleasant to hell on earth, but unfortunately my step tracker hasn’t. Somewhere around 48th Street it gets waterlogged and goes dark, and no amount of sopping up with napkins at a Flatiron Cha-Cha Matcha can undo the damage. I order a strawberry matcha and walk on.
12pm: After long stretches of sameness uptown, I enter the rapid-fire-neighborhood-changes stage of the walk: Union Square to Astor Place to Noho to Soho to Tribeca to the Financial District. At this point I’m booking it, speed-walking with a grim ‘let’s just get this done’ attitude.
12:45pm: I get it done! 13 miles in just north of five hours! Then I promptly get a giant sandwich and an Uber home.
